


The Fanfiction

by argentConflagration



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-19
Updated: 2013-03-20
Packaged: 2017-12-05 20:21:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/727535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/argentConflagration/pseuds/argentConflagration
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One of Meulin Leijon's favorite stories is a historical one. It's a legendary love, a relationship that went beyond the quadrants, the first ship. It's pre-scratch Karkat and Terezi. Her interest kind of creeps Latula out, and Kankri huffs and puffs over it, but for the most part everybody ignores it.</p>
<p>When she was younger she wrote fanfiction of them, which started off cute and fairytale-like. As she grew up it developed into fluff, and then as she grew up more it got a little smutty at parts.</p>
<p>At one point she gives her notebook to Kurloz to review, and it ends up in Gamzee's possession. Then Karkat cleans up Gamzee’s room.</p>
<p>Here's what happens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [unabashedShipping](https://archiveofourown.org/users/unabashedShipping/gifts), [soharu87](https://archiveofourown.org/users/soharu87/gifts).
  * Inspired by [this tumblr post](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/18793) by notalexa (unabashedShipping). 



> Continued at the request of soharu87.

He’s supposed to be cleaning Gamzee’s block, but instead he’s resenting the past self who said that he would if Gamzee would just stay out of the fucking vents for once. It’s bad enough that he never tidies up the place, but this is just gross. It’s not okay to leave food out to rot in your block like this.

He’s grumbling to himself about Gamzee’s poor sanitation when he spots a black volume lying on the floor. He thinks it’s a little strange, since Gamzee isn’t much of a reader, and on second glance he sees that some of it is in Gamzee’s handwriting. Gamzee’s just making comments on the main text, which is obviously a girl’s hand. It’s actually obnoxiously girly, obviously not Terezi’s or anything.

“What’s Gamzee doing with a girl’s notebook?” he wonders to himself. Too curious to put it down, he starts reading the page he happened to open to. Before long, he’s able to work out that it’s a love story. It’s not bad, either. It’s more or less a flushed romance, but the author’s done an interesting job of working tension between them in all the other quadrants into the story.

They have a really intriguing dynamic, what with one of the protagonists constantly questioning himself about the feelings he ‘should’ be feeling, and the other protagonist just sort of pushing her emotions to the side in kind of a self-destructive way. The author has interesting insights on the quadrants, too, and as he reads along he starts to form strong opinions and become invested in the lead couple.

It’s a bit unrealistic how they don’t seem to be considering the fact that they’ll have to fill their black quadrants eventually, and strange how no one seems to call anyone else by name, but he lets it slide since the author’s quite good in every respect. He especially likes the female of the two protagonists, who’s really adorable in the way she flirts and plays with the other guy.

“Terezi used to do that with me,” he thinks briefly before brushing the thought aside. What a stupid thought. He goes back to enjoying this romance, a better story than most of his romance novels. He makes it a point to ask Gamzee later where he got this. Gamzee’s comments are a little weird, to be honest. He doesn’t seem to like the female protagonist as much as Karkat thinks she deserves. More than once, he finds himself arguing with Gamzee’s comments, defending the female’s actions and characterization.

He turns the page to find an author’s note.

“This part is a little bit more, er, mature then what I’ve been writing so far, but you’re okay with that, right?”

He raises an eyebrow. He’s really starting to wonder how Gamzee found this, even though it’s probably nothing worse than the stuff Karkat reads in his romance novels. He’s been thinking that the two leads should just pail already for pages now, and he wonders if that’s what’s in the next chapter.

Sure enough, as he continues reading, the protagonists start paying more and more attention to each other’s bodies, in a way that suggests the narration is building up to something sexual.

It’s making him a bit uncomfortable, though. He’s already had to willfully ignore how much the female lead reminds him of Terezi, and as the prose gets more and more physical, the resemblance is uncanny, especially when the author’s writing from the point of view of the male lead. He’s not sure if he should stop reading when the male lead starts kissing teal blushes and running his hands along small, pointed horns.

It’s when the female lead mentions the deliciousness of the male’s red mutant blood, though, that he throws the book down with violence. Who the fuck is writing erotic fiction about him and Terezi, and why did he have to be such an idiot not to understand that earlier? It was so obvious in retrospect, their personalities, their quadrantfuck of a relationship, everything. And he’d been reading it and enjoying it, probably subconsciously realizing who it was about. Damn it, he didn’t want to think of Terezi like that, not as his potential matesprit, since he knew he didn’t have a chance with her anymore, but especially not as the subject of some wiggler girl’s porn fanfiction!

At first he thinks of destroying the book, just because he’s angry at it and angry at himself for reading it. The book tricked me into reading it, he thinks, even though he knows that’s idiotic.

In the end, though, curiosity wins out. He captchalogues the book and leaves, forgetting to finish his task.

When he gets back to his respiteblock, he’s calmed down a bit, and he sits down on a couch and retrieves the book. He overreacted at first, he thinks, and he should probably go back and look over the book again to find out who wrote it. Before he can, though, he hears a beep from his desk and gets up to see what it is. It’s Gamzee trolling him, and in the back of his mind he remembers only now that he never finished cleaning Gamzee’s block. That doesn’t really matter to him right now, though, because he seems upset. “HANG ON, I’LL BE RIGHT THERE,” he quickly types, and leaves the room again.


	2. Chapter 2

The subject of Karkat is one of a very few on which Terezi and Dave disagree, but this time she thinks she’s finally convinced him that it’ll be fun to bring Karkat along to hang out with them for a little while. He always seems so miserable, and although she rationalizes it away by remembering that he has Gamzee, she feels guilty for not talking to him more often. But she squelches that thought quickly as she tells Dave she’ll be back in a minute and goes off to get Karkat.

He’s not in his respiteblock, though, and she’s about to try trolling him when she notices a black journal on his couch. Intrigued, she picks it up and examines it. There’s no title on the cover, just some doodles, and the pages are handwritten in multiple people’s writing.

Starting from the first page, she sniffs carefully, pressing her nose into the book. The handwriting is that of a young girl, and the prose is childish, but what’s really interesting is the descriptions of the two main characters. One’s a female tealblood with small sharp horns and a preference for red, and the other is a male troll with red mutant blood and adorable nubby horns. Okay, so the text doesn’t specifically call them adorable, but everything about the male suggests that he’s Karkat, even though no names are given. She wonders who could possibly be writing about her and Karkat, and it’s even more baffling to think that the author has to be a young girl. She supposes that based on physical descriptions alone, the characters could also be her ancestor and his, or - although she really hopes not - Latula and Kankri, but that’d make even less sense. And even more interesting than the question of who wrote it, perhaps, is why Karkat has it in his respiteblock.

The story is really adorable, she thinks, and it’s kind of a guilty pleasure to imagine Karkat being that sweet and romantic with her. In the back of the mind a voice is reminding her that he doesn’t do those things to her, that she’s reading this silly fantasy because reality isn’t the way she wants it, but she ignores the feeling and keeps reading.

It’s a long volume of loosely-connected stories, and as she goes along she’s pleasantly surprised to see the writing and characterization improve. There’s no doubt anymore that these characters are her and Karkat, although Karkat does seem to be in a very good mood. _Maybe if I was his matesprit I could make him that happy….and is the fact that he left this in his respiteblock supposed to be some kind of signal?_ She starts giggling nervously at how flustered the idea makes her.

Comments start appearing in the margins, and although she wishes she didn’t, she recognizes the handwriting: it’s Gamzee’s. The tome’s origins are more of a mystery than over. _Did Karkat ask someone to write this?_ she asks herself as her stomach flip-flops. _Or was it that someone just wrote it unprompted and gave it to him, and then he showed it to Gamzee? Was he faking a girl’s handwriting for some bizarre reason?_ No theory makes sense, and she can’t stop thinking the question over even as she continues reading.

The fairy-tale romance of the earlier chapters gives way to emotional romance, and Terezi forgets time and the world around her as she loses herself in the story.

She turns another page to find an author’s note, a warning about the story getting more ‘mature’, and reads on. She blushes to read the sensual descriptions of Karkat, but it’s the parts written from his perspective that really grab her attention. She’d never really thought of herself as pretty, but the way the Karkat in the story describes her makes her sound beautiful, even if it is a slight exaggeration of her actual features. The Karkat in the story is in love with even Terezi’s imperfections, and for a moment she puts the book down and just indulges herself in the fuzzy feeling of imagining Karkat thinking of her as attractive. Then she once again remembers that Karkat must at least have read all this, and more than ever she wonders what real significance all this has.

She keeps reading. The scene has become more than a little sensual, but all she can think about is what Karkat was thinking while he read this. _Is this a thing with him, she thinks, to read stuff like this about us? And without saying anything at all to me?_ A strange tightness settles in her chest, and she wonders if it’s jealousy she’s feeling.

She reads on. While she still has no idea who this author is, her feelings toward her are uncomfortably conflicted. On its own, as something to think about inside her own head, she’d be quite happy with these stories. But the idea of some stranger writing them, and then Karkat reading them without her knowledge, makes her unsettled and maybe even a bit angry. She can’t blame Karkat, though. She’d have to be a huge hypocrite to be mad at him for holding onto flushed feelings from a sweep ago without saying anything.

The characters in the story had the same problem, she notes, although the reasons they don’t tell each other how they really feel are different, and she doesn’t quite understand them. They got there in the end, though. It’s her favorite moment so far. In the story, Karkat and Terezi are waiting out the rain in a cave, and Terezi convinces Karkat to play wiggler word games to pass the time. Somewhere in there, he confesses flushed feelings for her, and she reciprocates by kissing him. It’s an adorable scene, although the writing is a little choppy.

She skips ahead, wondering how the author’s going to handle it when they have to meet their Imperial obligation. Because of the messed-up and weirdly romantic multi-quadrant relationship they have, neither of them has taken a kismesis, and of course Karkat’s mutant color would put him in danger of culling. But the issue never seems to come up, which is odd because they keep getting older, and other plot points are related to them becoming adult trolls. She assumes the author decided to gloss over that detail in order to allow for the exotic romance of the ‘quadrant transcending’ relationship, but Terezi thinks it would have been much more romantic for them to fight off the drones together. She’d defend Karkat, which would make her a legitimate and legal target for the drones to come after, and then he’d defend her, and they’d both end up bruised and bloody but victorious in the end, and lovingly treat each other’s wounds as if they were moirails, and then even though they knew they’d have to leave first thing in the evening, they’d spend the day flushed and happy with each other, and maybe…

She stops that line of thought because she knows she’s getting carried away, and closes the book. Nothing good will come of this. She’s already wasted enough time on impossible romantic fantasies about that idiot. In the real world, he’d been too wrapped up in his own self-loathing to even make it clear whether he wanted her black or red. It’d be wrong of her to expect him to change that.

And yet, they could have had something, if he wasn’t so frustrating! She wonders if the fact that he was reading this means he still thinks of her that way … but she can’t let herself get caught up in that.

She turns back to the first page, as if she can turn back time, and get a second chance at making the relationship work. But she’s only read a page of the author’s childish scrawl when Karkat walks into the block. She snaps the book shut, but in the back of her mind she thinks that she might have wanted to get caught reading it.

“What are you doing in my block?”

She stands up, crossing her arms over the book, and smiles. “Just doing some reading.”

He takes a step towards her, and tries to snatch it out of her hands. “Give it back, that’s mine!”

“Do you have something against me reading it?” she asks, the same feigned levity in her tone.

“It sucks! And you wouldn’t be interested in it, anyway, you always tell me my romances are boring and shitty.”

“Maybe I’ve developed a sudden interest in them! That would make you happy, wouldn’t it?” She continues to goad him on, not sure what to make of his defensiveness. If this conversation ends up turning into a fight—like most of their conversations nowadays—she supposes that wouldn’t be so bad. But she lets herself hope for something more. After all, he was the one with the book. She can’t believe that meant absolutely nothing.

“Not that one! That one just isn’t good, okay?”

“Well if it’s bad, there’s no reason you’d want it back, right?”

Karkat balls his fists in frustration. “Okay, fine, I like it, but you probably wouldn’t, and you’d probably laugh at me for reading it, so just hand it the fuck over and we can forget this ever happened!”

Terezi face splits in a victorious grin. “You liked it, did you? What were your favorite parts?” she asks, thumbing through the book. “Was it this? ‘Her cheeks brightened with teal as her senses were overcome with the taste of him’? Or maybe ‘He ran his fingers from the delicate tips of her petite horns towards the base, and she shivered with anticipation, whispering the mutant-blood’s name’?” She thinks she can smell a blush come over his cheeks, and she tries to ignore the way her own face is heating up. “Karkat, I’d really like to know where you got this!”

“I don’t know where it came from! I found it a little while ago! I don’t know who the fuck writes about real people like that, but I was just curious, okay! It’s not like I, you know, think of you like that.”

“You don’t? You wouldn’t want me to shiver with anticipation and whisper your name? I’m disappointed, Karkat!” she says with a forced smile. “You said you liked it.”

“I don’t see why you want to be talking to me about this! Yes! Fine! I liked … certain aspects of it. And some of those aspects were related to how much the protagonists are like the two of us. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

Yes, yes it is, she thinks. Her voice drops to an intent whisper. “What if I said I wanted to be like that with you?”

“Are you being serious?”

“Of course I’m being serious, Karkat!” She takes the liberty of wrapping her arms tightly around him, knocking the breath out of him a bit before he reciprocates. “I miss what we had, and I know I got frustrated and squandered my chance with you. I just—it was hard, okay? I had my own things to deal with, and you were always so wrapped up in yourself, and you went off to talk to the humans and then you were with Gamzee and I felt like I was the only one who cared about us!” She rests against him for a long moment, just enjoying the sensation of his arms around her. “But I don’t think that’s what you’re really like, and I’m sorry I let you go. Maybe I could have a second chance?”

“That’s all bullshit,” he mumbles into her hair. “I fucked up, not you. In a shitload of ways.”

“Is that a ‘yes’ I smell?”

“Do you want it to be?”

She nods, and then he’s kissing her, all sweetness and gentleness, and she has to process that: Karkat is kissing her, like what happened on LOTAF but a hundred times better. She clings to him to keep from falling over, even though he’s just as much of a tiny scrap of a troll as she is. She takes one stumbling step back and pulls them both onto the couch, grinning against his face. “Maybe we just weren’t ready for each other a sweep ago,” she says, letting him catch his breath for a moment.

“Am I supposed to feel ready for this now?”

“Well, you must have learned something from that book, right?” she says, to smell him blush more. “Why don’t you show me?”


End file.
